BURY ST EDMUNDS, England, June 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

SmartDrive has won the prestigious Fleet Safety Product of  the Year award at the 2011 Brake Fleet Safety Forum "Awards for Excellence" for  its advanced in-vehicle video safety programme that improves driver behaviour  and reduces collisions. Another honour at this Brake event, the "Safe Vehicles" award went to online grocery retailer Ocado, a SmartDrive  customer.

"We are delighted that Brake, the leading safety advocate in the UK, has recognized SmartDrive Safety for its achievements in working with leading fleets in the UK to improve safety performance. We look at this as  another validation of  how the innovations in the SmartDrive programme are  enabling fleets to better understand their driving risk and improve performance,"  said SmartDrive UK Managing Director Steve Cowper.

A total of 35  companies were recognised as winners or were highly commended in the 11 award  categories.

"The Fleet Safety Forum Awards for Excellence 2011  received more entries, and welcomed more guests, than ever before, showing the  huge amount of commitment to managing road risk within the industry. It's  fantastic to be able to recognise companies that are helping drive down crashes  and casualties by raising the bar of fleet safety best practice. Brake  congratulates all the winners, and we look forward to sharing case studies on  this impressive range of initiatives through the Fleet Safety Forum throughout the year," said Julie Townsend, Deputy Chief Executive,  Brake.

SmartDrive's innovative fleet safety programme uses a broad  range of video, audio, motion and GPS sensors to detect risky driving  manoeuvres, such as sudden stops, hard cornering, aggressive acceleration, and  excessive speed. This delivers comprehensive video and vehicle event information  used by SmartDrive vehicle safety experts who evaluate these recorded events for more than 50 unsafe driving behaviours.

Fleets across all  industries use this insight and analysis to improve safe driving performance and  reduce fuel consumption. Moreover, with increasing focus on compliance, fleets  now have a better way to identify and reduce risks such as smoking, eating,  using handheld mobile phones and non-use of seatbelts resulting in dramatic  decreases in collision frequency and crash related  expenses.

SOURCE SmartDrive